Alright
by Erina
Summary: We've read the story 10,000 times. Popular boy meets shy bookish girl; they soon fall in love while facing epic challenges. Suppose James Potter and Lily Evans were just normal teens growing up in 1970's UK? Normal but for 1 or 2 exceptions, of course...


Anything  
  
Beck Tillman couldn't believe his luck. Here he was, on a fantastic summer day, his left hand held firmly in the palm of his girlfriend-a beautiful redhead. They walked in companionable silence down Diagon Alley, looking in shop windows, dodging the occasional pile of owl poop, and generally enjoying each other's company. Though they had been seeing each other for several months, Beck was still in awe of himself for his ability to successfully snare her. He felt like an awful prig for thinking in those brutish terms, but he let it slide. He unconsciously squeezed her hand, and she smiled up at him and gave him a quick kiss. As always, he felt mildly dizzy and rather intoxicated by her. He was rudely jerked out of his reverie when he heard a screech.  
  
"Lily!" His girlfriend swung sharply in hearing her name, grinning, and nearly dislocated his shoulder. He yelped, letting go of her hand, as she threw herself at a tall young woman with long brown hair, wicked black eyes, and a decidedly reckless lopsided grin. Beck recognized her as Lily's friend Damiane, and grunted a hello as he rubbed his throbbing shoulder. Lily turned from her friend with an apologetic look at Beck.  
  
"Oh, Beck, I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Did I hurt you too badly?"  
  
"Nope," he said through gritted teeth. "You're certainly stronger that you look, though," he said with difficulty. Damiane laughed and clapped him heartily on his sore shoulder. She got another sharp yelp as response. Lily pushed her playfully and said how mean she was. None of Lily's friends really liked Beck, Damiane especially. She didn't really appear to like the male species in general, actually. Lily, bless her little heart, walked him over to a nearby ice cream parlor, Florean Fortescue's, and sat him down. She told him to rest and went to the counter to buy ice cream for them both. Damiane, much to his chagrin, sat down beside him.  
  
"So, Breck-"  
  
"Beck."  
  
"Whatever," she snorted. "Anyway, what exactly do you think you're doing with Lily?"  
  
"You waited for the five months we've been dating to ask me this question?"  
  
"Yes." He sighed.  
  
"I'm dating her. Because I like her. And if I'm not much mistaken, I believe she likes me, too."  
  
"You're not her type."  
  
"Meaning?" He felt irritation rising like bile in his throat, and since he was generally an even-tempered person, he was rather shocked by his own anger.  
  
"In laymans' terms, you're a daft sissy." She threw it at him, daring him to reply. When he didn't take the bait, she continued. "Apart from that... well, we'll just say because you're a daft sissy." She smiled mockingly at him to drive the point home.  
  
"Excuse me," he asked, rather put-out by the attack, "but what have I ever done to you?"  
  
"That's beside the point," she said, as she tossed her hair over her right shoulder. He noticed, for the first time, that there was an undeterminable number of what looked like cut marks starting where her neck met her shoulders all the way up to her jawline. Noticing his confused gaze, she dropped whatever niceties she had been using during their conversation. Obviously this really sent her over the edge. "Just stay away from Lily. You don't deserve her," she spat, with an unexpected edge to her voice. She stood up, gave him a good hard squeeze on his bad shoulder, and left the parlor. He gritted his teeth, no longer feeling quite so lucky.  
  
Meanwhile, Lily stood at the very end of an unimaginably long line and waited to buy the ice cream. Since it was an uncharacteristically humid day, she wiped her forehead constantly. Her thick, red hair was sticking to the back of her neck, and she called herself seven kinds of idiot for not tying it back on such a hot day. Her faded gray T-shirt stuck to her back and stomach, and she was positive she looked like one of those fat truck drivers in sweat-soaked shirts many sizes too small. While she fidgeted in her discomfort, wondering if the woman in the front of the line needed an engraved invitation to buy her ice cream, Lily didn't notice the tall young man with unruly black hair and glasses walk up and stand in line a pace or two behind her. He folded newly muscled arms and waited for her to notice him, grinning all the while. She turned to look around, since nothing exciting was happening in front of her. No reaction to him. The young man was puzzled, to say the least, and decided just to say something.

"Hello, Lily." She looked up at him, way up at him-he was about a foot taller than she was-and he watched her face until realization finally dawned on her features, closely followed by carefully contained-but still recognizable- dislike.  
  
"Potter," she responded curtly. "You look...different." The James Potter Lily remembered from the past six years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was drastically different from the James Potter that stood before her. When before James was tall, he was now a giant at at least 6'5''; when before he was pale, now he was tan; when before he was scrawny, now he was now subtly muscular-to say the least. She was rather sure, however, that he was the exact same pompous, arrogant prig that she had been housemates with since their first year. She swiftly forgot that during the previous year he had begun to remedy his ways, and only remembered his half-decade reign as King of the Prats, as she referred to him as.  
  
"Are you trying to prove something by changing your appearance?" Lily was not impressed by his efforts to make himself more attractive. If anything, it made her more convinced than she already was that was just a self-absorbed and shallow ass. James was undeterred. He was quite used to her eloquent but cutting retorts and lines of questioning.  
Poor James had been trying for the past three years to get Lily to go out with him. Though she was very popular with all of the boys at Hogwarts and elsewhere, James considered himself the most worthy of all of her admirers. He did actually love her in his own strange way, but he made his efforts for her lighthearted and slightly teasing-he didn't want her to know that he truly loved her. It would just make her rejection more painful.  
As all of this went through his mind, he checked her out. Even though she knew what he was doing as was glaring at him because if it, he checked her out anyway. After all, she had checked him out. Fair's fair. She was extremely beautiful, in James's expert opinion. Even while sweating profusely, she was extremely beautiful. She had long, thick, dark red hair, with a chunk that framed the right side of her face dyed platinum blonde. Lily was always pretty edgy, even when she was young. Her lips, complete with red lipstick, were pursed in her irritation, and her nose was scrunched because her eyes were narrowed in her glare. Freckles generously dusted the scrunched nose, and the narrowed eyes were a striking green. Artfully smeared black eyeliner did just that-lined her eyes. Beads of sweat were gathered on her forehead and dampened the hair on her hairline to black. Her hands were on her hips, and he could see her nails were painted in a chipping off black lacquer and were bitten down to the quick. Her faded gray T-shirt had Jim Morrison's face screened on it with 'the Doors' in red above his head. He knew for a fact that the Doors were her favorite band. Her shirt clung to her modestly curvy form more than she probably would have liked due to the sweat. She wore faded jeans with old grass stains on the knees, and Converse high tops that looked as if they were rotting off her adorned her feet. The only jewelry she wore was a Claddagh ring on her right middle finger and an impossibly old and worn- looking black leather watch on her left wrist. Man, did he love that girl.

Author's Note: I know that everyone who just read that would like very much to kill me for the sickeningly descriptive manner in which I described Lily and her appearance. My intent was not to bore you or chuck cliches at you, I just wanted to demonstrate how much thought James put into his mental description of Lily compared to how Beck describes her and how Lily described James. I hope you enjoyed the first chapter, but if you didn't, everyone knows that first chapters are the worst of the entire work. So stick around. I'll try and improve on it in future chapters...not to mention intrtoducing a bunch of awesome (if I do say so myself) original characters to join the people you know. I'll stop continuing to bore you. Be a pal and please review, if only so I can try and make this as entertaining a s possible to read. Thank you.


End file.
